


Prologue

by Charolastra



Series: The Horror! [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Eldritch monster, F/M, Gen, M/M, Slice of Life, Young Ben, angsty, young hargreeves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 13:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charolastra/pseuds/Charolastra
Summary: Ben Hargreeves has quite the troubled life. From the disappearance of his brother to the literal monster in his stomach, things just seem to get worse and worse as time goes by.Number Six fights his misgivings about his family, his past, his blood mother and his adoptive father all while he plots to escape from the wretched mansion. Things...get a little complicated.





	Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter! Woop! 
> 
> Basically unfolding the setting, explaining the whole state of affairs in the Hargreeves house. The us'.

'Take off your shirt' is usually not what a 50-year-old would say to a 14-year-old. Then again, Hargreeves wasn't the usual 50-year-old, and I wasn't the usual 14-year-old.

So I have to comply. Half-way. My stomach is visible, at least. The old man didn't really like that, and glancing up, I found he was staring down at me through one monocled eye, the other squeezed shut until it practically disappeared in his wrinkled brow. His trademarked sour face.

"Number Six," Father began, his moustache twitching with every cold, accented syllable; a sign that he was about to get mean and I'd better take my damn shirt off if I knew what was good for me (although the Monster was never good for anybody). It wasn't even my day of training, but Father had recently implemented a schedule where he needed to examine the portal in my stomach twice a day. Whatever that meant.

My shirt in one hand, I stood still as I could while father crouched down and pressed two cold fingers to my diaphragm. Everything about him was cold; cold hands, cold eyes, cold heart. It might've been less uncomfortable if he were a regular dad who didn't ensure his kids never laid a hand on him unless first requesting permission. Permission was always denied, anyway.

It would be unusual still if that were it, but his madness had its own method. Just beneath the skin above my belly button, an oval shaped ring could be made out, intangible but visibly humming with a blueish glow, like worms under a slimy little film. The glow was so strong--or maybe my skin so pale-- that residual light outlined my bottom ribs in blue the shade of glaciers. It was really gross, if you asked me. Old man Hargreaves used to get sick just looking at it, too, but today he must have a steel grip on his stomach, or something, because he doesn't even make that stupid nauseous face he used to and it's suddenly lost even the tiniest bit of amusement it once gave me. Classic Father.

While he busies himself laying a tape measure around the oval, mumbling something about a circumference, I don't have much else to do but look around. It's the same house we lived in for 15 years. Same smooth, elegant banister leading up the stairs, the same velvety carpet draped on each step, same polished woodgrain floors that glittered in sunlight and sweet beige trim. It was almost like a seek-and-find puzzle, though the differences weren't hard to miss. There were the same boring portraits of us kids on the wall, save Five and Seven; One of which was removed maybe a year ago now and one that was never there at all.

I used to be so jealous of Five. Spatial jumping would make life way easier, and it surely wouldn't be as hard to deal with as a literal portal to Hell inside your stomach. _Anything_ at all would be better.

Used to be jealous, though. Heavy on the 'used.'

Now, more than anything, I'd rather be like Vanya I'm halfway there, having little to no connection to the rest of my brothers--pity party much!--but really I just want to be ordinary. I'd rather learn to play violin with her than learn all the ways I can try to control a giant octo-beast that has no qualms about displacing my own guts. I'd rather not go on missions, come back needing a shower, watching blood lave off me and down the drain for half an hour because I refuse to get out until every piece is out of my hair. I'd rather not feel this insatiable need to scrub the skin on my chest raw.

To be frank, I'd rather lay in bed all my life.

I about jump five feet in the air when Father snaps the tape measure shut. Cold metal zips across my skin, just barely catching on one belt loop. Father rights himself, his full stature an exact measurement of way-too-tall foot and intimidating inches. His slim face always reminds me of a Scottish terrier. "Dismissed, Number Six."

With little more than a grunt, he commands me, like all of us in the house, to do his bidding. My shirt is still warm when I pull it back on but Father's stare hasn't warmed up in the slightest, even when I say the perfunctory, "Thank you, Father," turning away respectively. His gaze is two shots of ice embedded in my skin, cold spreading around my back until I'm at the top of the stares, but even then frost sneaks round my veins and I feel just a bit afraid all over.

He hates me the most. I know it. He hates me because neither of us know where to even start when it comes to controlling the stupid monster or the portal, because he doesn't really like not knowing or being in control, because I don't like to listen, and the whole thing frustrates him so he's meanest on my training days. I don't think he would ever hit somebody, though. Verbal abuse is enough for him.

It might be time for lunch soon. I'm definitely hungry and definitely without appetite all at once and, mercifully, Mom doesn't stop me when I make for the second flight of stairs to the topmost level of the house. She goes on fixing 8 different meals at once with just two hands. I don't want to talk, anyway. I don't want to listen.

I used to swear that the moment I could, I'd run away from this house. Maybe I would move to Japan or something, find my real mother. I could get a butcher to turn this monster into a sushi buffet bar with a bit of persuasion. Maybe my birth mother would love me more than even Grace could.

I think the little bastard knows when I think bad of it, though, because I feel something writhing around by my diaphragm like it's trying to open the portal, all, ' _What'd you say about me, punk?'_

I feel like I haven't moved at all when I blink and see my bedroom sprawling before me. Rather than feel it, I see my feet carry myself into the bed, see my fists ball up the fabric of my shirt and see my head then to look out the open window. No screens. Ivy, thick as wool, runs all over the house walls. It would be easy to climb down.

Even though there is opportunity everywhere, I wouldn't really run. Where would I go? How would I get there? I don't remember anything from geography, but I bet Japan isn't the easiest place to run to from America. Luther would probably know, but I still don't feel like talking, and I think I know enough for one evening, anyway; Luther can go be a big smartie pants in his own room.

That leaves me with my own thoughts, little more than recycled critiques from Father and from myself. My knuckles have turned white when I pull myself from that hazy thought.

Lately, more and more, its been harder not to fall into bed and let the sun drain the uncertainty off me, even in the breezy afternoons where I used to kick a ball around with Klaus or bug Vanya or Five. I knew enough to feel the hole in my chest widening. I didn't know enough to understand why.  
  
I'm me again--Ben, not Number Six or a nickname--when I fall back into the covers, the ceiling high above me. I know that I'm me, at the least, as if that makes the unknowns better.

I also know that, regardless of how I may hope, no mother would really love me like their own. Even a mother couldn't love a mythical horror, whether or not it was her own damn son. Everybody's told me so.

You can't love a horror.  



End file.
